HELLO
I recently bought a cheap pc from a friend and thought i would be able to get it going with the right bits that it needed internally (harddrive memory etc)
The problem is it tries to boot up and all it seems to do is the cpu fan is spinning at ten to the dozen the cd dvd drive light is on all the time & it has a blank screen (no picture what so ever).
I have tried literally everything to try and get this thing going and it is driving me mad.
Does anyone have any ideas what it could be.
I have tried another graphics card / different memory / new power supply / removing the cmos battery and many others but to no joy.
Any ideas would be a bonus cheers
Selwyn

is the Video connection on board or a PCI card. is this a VGA or DVI connection.

HELLO
The motherboard dosen't have a built in vga socket , it has an agp graphics card from my other pc in it at the moment.

if you are not geting anything on the screen then some thing is wrong with the video card of the mo board is dead.

Remove all connected items including the video card, then connect the video card ONLY, then try to boot, see what happen

HELLO
I have literally unplugged everything from the motherboard apart from the hard drive and the graphics card and i still get nothing.
As you say i think it is either a dead motherboard or maybe a faulty cpu.
A friend of mine said to a pci card in one of the pci slots but i dont have a pci card at the moment.

I will see if i can take the cmos battery out for like half an hour or something as i only took it out for about a minute before.
Also i am going to see on the compaq website if i can reset the motherboard jumpers if there is any on the motherboard.

you are using a AGP card from other computer are you sure its comparable with the compaq board .right speed and voltage .

it is the bog standard graphics card that came with my compaq pc & i t is being fitted into the problem compaq pc.
I don't know about speed and voltage , i would say they would be about te same if not less on the replacement graphics card.
Thank u ppl

Disconnect all drives -- both signal and power cables. Only way to rule out a faulty drive hard or optical or floppy.

HELLO MATE
I have tried this and still nothing.
It is either the cpu or motherboard that it shot as the rest of the parts are from other working pcs